Alaska Employment Law

In honor of the playoffs, here’s some baseball reading: Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson’s First Season, by Jonathan Eig, and Ballparks Then and Now, by Eric Enders.

Mr. Eig, a senior special writer for the Wall Street Journal, broke into the world of baseball books a year or two ago with his really excellent biography of Lou Gehrig.  Alas, Opening Day is not quite up to the author’s previous high standard.  Focusing on that first year (1947) and especially the cultural and racial climate inside and outside baseball, Mr. Eig aims at too many small targets rather than one big one.  He debunks some history (e.g., Jackie Robinson was not a patient man, he was an angry man; Pee Wee Reese probably did not put his arm around Robinson’s shoulder to quiet a hateful mob of heckling racist fans in Cincinnati), draws a thoughtful portrait of the exceedingly shrewd Branch Rickey, general manager and part owner of the Dodgers, and (to my considerable surprise) points out that while Robinson was first, no fewer than five black players debuted in the major leagues in 1947.  One of them, Willard Brown of the St. Louis Browns, was the first black player to hit a home run (inside the park no less) in the American League.  (Since Larry Doby was the first black player in the League and eventually led that League in home runs, I always figured it was Doby.)  Who knew? Anyway, this is an okay book, but not a great book.

As for Enders’ Ballparks, there are a number of books available that detail the pictorial histories of all the major league ballparks (there is even one book that tries to cover every professional baseball park known to have existed).  This one strikes a nice balance and is full of fine black & white and color photography.  At $11, it’s a good buy.  An interesting detail: Fenway Park is on the book’s back cover – no real surprise there.  But on the front cover is another Boston ballpark, the Grand Pavilion, still the only double-deck ballpark ever built in Boston.  Opened in the South End in 1888, it burned to the ground in 1894, leaving behind a good reason not to build wooden ballparks.